“A bracing dystopian tale that deftly mixes magic, evolution, and romance” featuring a wiccan priestess and a humanoid who fall in love against all odds (Kirkus Reviews). A feel-good dystopian novel? Welcome to MagicLand. On a future Earth where magic and technology have been at war for two thousand years, can one kiss change the fate of the world? When a young actor from Gath, Belex, crash lands outside the magic land known as Moria, he’s rescued by a young Morian priestess in waiting, Aurilena. The two find themselves drawn impossibly towards each other in the midst of a war between two distinct species of humanoids: her people, the magicians of Moria, and his people, the Gath, whose tremendous intellectual and physical capabilities are programmed into their DNA. Together, the two discover a terrible secret that lies at the heart of the centuries-old conflict between MagicLand and Gath. It’s a secret that leads to a kiss that could end the war once and for all. The only question is will it end in brutal violence or give way to an improbable peace between implacable enemies? The answer to that question may depend on whether Aurilena can discover the true source of power behind her unique gifts before it’s too late. “Bastille’s debut artfully combines magic, technology, and romance. . . . [He] handles the multilayered plot well, creating a fascinating world populated with empathetic characters.” —Publishers Weekly

The American West conjures up images of pastoral tranquility and wide open spaces, but by 1970 the Far West was the most urbanized section of the country. Exploring four intriguing cityscapes—Disneyland, Stanford Industrial Park, Sun City, and the 1962 Seattle World's Fair—John Findlay shows how each created a sense of cohesion and sustained people's belief in their superior urban environment. This first book-length study of the urban West after 1940 argues that Westerners deliberately tried to build cities that differed radically from their eastern counterparts. In 1954, Walt Disney began building the world's first theme park, using Hollywood's movie-making techniques. The creators of Stanford Industrial Park were more hesitant in their approach to a conceptually organized environment, but by the mid-1960s the Park was the nation's prototypical "research park" and the intellectual downtown for the high-technology region that became Silicon Valley. In 1960, on the outskirts of Phoenix, Del E. Webb built Sun City, the largest, most influential retirement community in the United States. Another innovative cityscape arose from the 1962 Seattle World's Fair and provided a futuristic, somewhat fanciful vision of modern life. These four became "magic lands" that provided an antidote to the apparent chaos of their respective urban milieus. Exemplars of a new lifestyle, they are landmarks on the changing cultural landscape of postwar America.

Before the tempest roared to life, the grandmother’s eyes were fixed upon a distant glow amidst the clouds. With a knowing sigh, she murmured, “The time has finally come.” As Batis extinguished his birthday candles, an ethereal whisper emerged from the dissipating smoke. An ancient voice beckoned him towards an unseen path. With a celestial threat looming, Batis must embark on a quest – fleeing from sky-born pursuers who seek him. Guided by his grandmother, who unlocks a suitcase brimming with tales and truths, their adventure unfolds. Dive into a world where myths breathe and destiny is written in the stars.

This book contains the third and fourth novels in the Russian Oz-inspired "Magic Land" series. In "The Seven Underground Kings," Ellie and her cousin Fred arrive by accident in the kingdom of the Underground Ore-Diggers at a time of crisis, and help put things right. In "The Fiery God of the Marrans," villainous Urfin Jus, using an ordinary cigarette lighter, passes himself off as a god to the primitive Marran people, who do not even have fire, and makes them into a powerful military force to use to conquer the Emerald City.

This book contains translations into English of the first two Oz-inspired "Magic Land" novels by Russian author Alexander Volkov. In the first story, Ellie, a little girl from Kansas, is blown by a tornado to Magic Land, where she learns that the best things in the world are friendship and mutual assistance. In the second story, Ellie returns to Magic Land to fight an evil ruler. New edition contains revised Afterword, an article comparing the 1939 and 1959 versions of WIZARD, and a select bibliography of Volkov's other works.